HP buys Mercury Interactive

HP will pay $52 per share to Mercury shareholders, representing a 33 percent premium to the Tuesday closing price of Mercury shares on the pink sheets. The company was delisted from Nasdaq in January for failing to file its financial reports on time amid an investigation into its accounting practices regarding stock options. Mercury had recently been embroiled in an options scandal which consumed top management including Ammon Landon, former CEO of Mercury. This combined entity provides for a powerful Enterprise System Management offering with HP OpenView and industry leading testing tools such as Winrunner and Loadrunner.

This acquisition finally closes the chapter on the options scandal, which had been cleared up from the perspective of the accounting department several weeks ago. This acquisition was under a cloud of speculation as investors felt that the current management was still being scrutinized by regulators and such an acquisition would provide a clean slate to Mercury customers, suppliers and employees. HP has a "squeaky clean" management reputation, and this transaction should help ease any fears about any future issues.

Of note to SOA watchers, this acquisition includes the Systinet division, a market leader in SOA Governance products. The combination of HP Openview Enterprise System Management capabilities with Mercury and Systinet Governance capabilities provides a powerful suite for centralized IT to control and manage enterprise-wide software initiatives such as SOA. The acquisition of Systinet by Mercury was announced on January 6th of 2006.